Australian Tax Office To Use Keystroke Logger On Employees... But Just To Stop Repetitive Stress Injuries
from the oh-really-now? dept
Slashdot points us to the news that the Australian Tax Office is seeking software to monitor keystrokes and mouse clicks of their employees -- not to spy directly on what they're doing, but in an attempt to learn about why their employees keep coming down with repetitive stress injuries. Apparently, the ATO's insurance premiums were going way up because lots of employees were missing time due to such problems. Realizing this might look bad, the ATO is insisting that this will be "voluntary" (though, who's going to volunteer for that?) and that it would only count keystrokes rather than record them. Either way, I can't imagine most employees will be too excited about this.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: australia, keylogger, repetitive stress injuries
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Nothing to see here, move along please
I'm at a bit of a loss as to how this constitutes a horrible breach of employee privacy, Mike. Maybe I'm just not wearing the right tin-foil hat (and I have a pretty sweet one, you should check it out).
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Re: Nothing to see here, move along please
"The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit."
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Re: Re: Nothing to see here, move along please
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Re: Re: Nothing to see here, move along please
Wrong. It logs usage statistics at a daily granularity.
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Re: Nothing to see here, move along please
Besides, what kind of "horrible privacy breach" can a keylogger achieve in a work environment (unless your employees are actually doing something else other than work)?
One last point, if they WERE going to spy on their employees, why would they shout out to the world that they would do so? Why not silently stick a keylogger into every PC and call it good?
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Re: Re: Nothing to see here, move along please
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Re: Nothing to see here, move along please
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See a problem, fix the cause. Why is this difficult?
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You see, they need to study the problem for a really long time before spending any money on potential solutions. The cost / benefit analysis says so.
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To a man with a hammer...
Heaven help the employees if this same problem occurs in a colonoscopy clinic.
NMM
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